Jimi Hendrix Encyclopedia

Did you see Jimi Hendrix in concert? Did you meet Jimi Hendrix or have the opportunity to interview him or have some other unique, first-person encounter with Jimi Hendrix? If so, Experience Hendrix wants to hear from you.

The band plays at the Center Arena, supported by Soft Machine. Afterwards, Hendrix returns to his father’s home to spend the evening with family and friends, while Mitch and Noel spend the night at the Olympic Hotel.

The Experience perform at Regis College in Denver, Colorado. Soft Machine opens. Meanwhile, in London, Les Perrin accepts Hendrix’s Disc & Music Echo award for “Top World Musician.” The ceremony takes place at the “Valentine’s Night Ball” at the Empire Rooms on Tottenham Court Road.

The Experience, along with Soft Machine, The Moving Sidewalks, and The Chessmen, play the State Fair Music Hall in Dallas, Texas. The set includes: “Are You Experienced?” “Fire,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Tax Free,” “Foxey Lady,” “Hey Joe,” “Spanish Castle Magic,” “Red House,” and “Purple Haze.”

January 9, 1969 Konserthuset Stockholm, Sweden Two Shows with Jethro Tull That afternoon, Jimi grants an interview to Ulla Lundstrom. He also takes part in a press reception attended by writers from Aftonbladet, Expressen, Bildjournalen, and Dagens Nyheter. Prior to his concert, Jimi spoke with Lennart Wretlind and excerpts were later featured as part of the January 12 radio program Pop 68 Special. 1st Show: Killing Floor Spanish Castle Magic Fire Hey Joe Voodoo Child (Slight Return) Red House Sunshine Of Your Love 2nd Show: I Don’t Live Today Spanish Castle Magic Hey Joe Voodoo Child (Slight Return) Sunshine Of Your Love Red House Fire Purple Haze Star Spangled Banner The first of these two performances was videotaped for SVT Swedish Television. “Sunshine Of Your Love” and “Red House” were featured as part of the 2001 video release Experience.

Studio Dumont Koln, Germany Two Shows with Eire Apparent Jimi attended an autograph session at Studio Du Monde Book & Record Shop. Part of the event was filmed and later featured as part of the German television program Beat Club. Sporthalle Koln, Germany Come On (Let The Good Times Roll) Foxey Lady Red House Voodoo Child (Slight Return) Fire Spanish Castle Magic Hey Joe Sunshine Of Your Love Purple Haze

Ellis Auditorium, Memphis, Tennessee [Two Shows] With Fat Mattress Set List: [Second Show] Fire I Don’t Live Today Hear My Train A Comin’ Sunshine Of Your Love Stone Free Foxey Lady Star Spangled Banner Purple Haze Voodoo Child (Slight Return) Burdened with an exhaustive schedule of personal appearances, the tense relationship between Hendrix and bassist Noel Redding further deteriorated. Frustrated, Hendrix reached out to old friend Billy Cox, with whom he had served in the US Army and performed on the famed R&B ‘chitlin’ circuit’ prior to leaving for New York. The bassist reunited with Hendrix backstage at this Experience concert in Memphis. “We met when the Experience played in Memphis,” Cox explains. “He told me that he wanted me to be his bass player. He said that things weren’t in the order the way he wanted them and would I come as a friend and help him out. He said he’d take care of me and everything would be okay and so I gladly accepted. I went back to Nashville, closed my publishing company, dropped everything else and left for New York.” Three days after the backstage meeting in Memphis, Cox joined Hendrix at the Record Plant recording studio in New York.

Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada With Cat Mother & The All Night Newsboys Set List: Fire Hear My Train A Comin’ Spanish Castle Magic Red House Foxey Lady Purple Haze Voodoo Child (Slight Return) The Experience fly to Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario and arrive at 9:30 a.m.. While checking through Canada Customs, one of the bags Hendrix offers to be searched contains what is believed to be an illicit substance. Hendrix is arrested and taken to Police Headquarters in downtown Toronto. He is later released on a $10,000 cash bail and required at a court appearance on May 5. After his release, The Experience book into the Four Seasons Hotel and then head directly to Maple Leaf Gardens where they prepare for an evening performance. Jimi opened his show with greeting, “We want you to forget about today, about yesterday, and about tomorrow. Tonight we’re gonna create a whole new world,” The guitarist then launched into an incendiary rendition of “Fire.” Ritchie Yorke, who reviewed the performance for the May 4 issue of The Globe And Mail, was moved to write, “his guitar became the voice of the Rave New World. It screamed, hissed, and shrieked with the ferocity of a thousand dentist drills plunged into a single tooth.” The evening’s performance also featured a superb version of “Spanish Castle Magic”, complete with touches of both “Third Stone From The Sun” and “Little Miss Lover” interwoven within the song’s extended instrumental break. Jimi also performed a rare, fascinating early live version of “Room Full Of Mirrors”.

War Memorial Auditorium, Syracuse, New York With Cat Mother & The All Night Newsboys Set List: [partial] Fire I Don’t Live Today Stone Free Foxey Lady The Experience traveled from Toronto to Syracuse, New York. They secured lodging at the Randolph House Hotel before their performance that evening at the Syracuse War Memorial Auditorium.

Charleston Civic Center, Charleston, West Virginia With Fat Mattress, Chicago Transit Authority Set List: [partial] Fire Come On (Let The Good Times Roll) Hear My Train A Comin’ Voodoo Child (Slight Return) Purple Haze Wild Thing The Experience arrived in Charleston, West Virginia and reserved rooms at the Hart O’Town Motor Inn prior to their performance that evening at the Charlotte Civic Centre. Following his performance, Hendrix was interviewed by Ray Brack for a Charleston Gazette article published the following week.

Denver Pop Festival, Denver, Co. Set List: Tax Free Hear My Train A Comin’ Fire Spanish Castle Magic Red House Foxey Lady Star Spangled Banner Purple Haze The Experience topped the bill at the 1969 Denver Pop Festival. The festival, staged at Mile High Stadium, boasted a stellar lineup which also included Johnny Winter, Joe Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Poco, Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention, Iron Butterfly, Tim Buckley, and Big Mama Thornton. An inspired set by the Experience was marred by a riot following the group’s performance. Police officers began firing tear gas at the audience while Eric Barrett, a roadie for the Experience, rushed the band off stage and into the back of their rented equipment truck. Fans climbed all over the vehicle, nearly buckling the roof before the Barrett and the road crew could whisk the group away. The Denver Pop Festival would prove to be the last performance by the original Jimi Hendrix Experience. Immediately afterwards, Noel Redding elected to leave the group and returned to London. Redding cited Hendrix’s stated desire to expand the group without consulting him as one of the factors influencing his decision.

Fillmore East, New York Two Shows Prior to their two concerts later that evening, Hendrix and his Band Of Gypsys held an afternoon sound check and rehearsal at the Fillmore East. Later that evening, before a sold out crowd of 2,639, Hendrix rang in the New Year and new decade with two unforgettable performances. The evening’s festivities opened with a spirited set by the Voices Of East Harlem, an enthusiastic young gospel ensemble. With the anticipation of the sold out Fillmore audience heightened to fever pitch, Hendrix led his trio through a scintillating, seventy-five minute opening performance. None of the eleven songs presented had yet to grace an Experience album. In the place of signature songs like “Purple Haze” and “All Along The Watchtower” were confident renditions of “Izabella” and “Hear My Train A Comin’”. At midnight, Kip Cohen, the venue’s master of ceremonies, rang in the new year and decade buffeted by Guy Lombardo’s “Auld Lang Syne”. Never one to be upstaged, Jimi and company greeted the joyous house with their own inspired reading of the holiday staple. For Amalie Rothschild, the Fillmore East’s house photographer, the experience was an unforgettable one. “Then there was the countdown at midnight. It was the countdown that was a real scream. We’re talking about the end of the Sixties. December 31, 1969 turning into January 1, 1970–.A new decade. This was significant. After all, we were living through it and we knew that the Sixties were the Sixties. We had this big countdown on the [Joshua White] light show screen with this big clock 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…and everybody is yelling together. Then the light show screen pulls up and everybody is on stage–all the crew and the musicians. Hendrix, who is now on stage, launches into this amazing rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and I filmed it [excerpts of Rothschild’s color film footage can be seen in the VHS/DVD Band Of Gypsys]. This was history in the making. You could not miss this. His performance was just so inspired. It was just terrific and I can’t find the words to describe it.” The recordings which make up both Band Of Gypsys and its two disc sequel Live At The Fillmore East certainly bear out Rothschild’s remembrances. Jimi’s celebrated work with the Band Of Gypsys stands among his most impressive and lasting achievements. After the show, Ian Dove of Record Mirror interviewed Jimi Hendrix for the January 10, 1970 edition of the British paper. Later that night, Hendrix retreated to The Café Caliph (previously known as The Café Au Go Go) in Greenwich Village where he joined The James Cotton Blues Band on stage for a jam.

Ungano’s New York, N.Y. Joined by Elvin Bishop, Buddy Miles and others, Hendrix took part in a jam session at Ungano’s nightclub (210 West 70th Street, New York City). Sacha Reins, a writer for French entertainment magazine Best (Issue 39) who just happened to be in the club during the event, later wrote about the evening. “It is beginning to get quite late, and I tell myself that I have to go. I look to the door and get a big shock. Jimi is there with a black guitar in his hand. Buddy Miles follows him. He shakes the hand of the boss, and I hear him asking if he doesn’t mind them playing a bit. The three telephone booths near the entrance are immediately occupied. We all want to tell a friend that nice things are about to happen. Less than an hour later the club is full. Jimi is onstage and Buddy is looking for a drum stool big enough to support his enormous weight. “A very young guitar player who has been playing for half an hour wants to leave. He doesn’t want to play anymore. Jimi stops him and asks him if they can play together. They try out a rather quick number and Jimi intentionally stays in the background. He waits until the young guitarist regains his confidence. Then he takes his turn. He plays short phrases with long silence intermissions during which one only hears the strong and regular pulsations of Buddy Miles. The silences become shorter and shorter. The phrases are less and less chopped up; they become enchained, stupefying. Jimi had found his groove and under his fingers the strings tell us strange stories that we don’t fully comprehend.”

Billed as the “Winter Festival For Peace,” Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul & Mary) and Sid Bernstein, event producers, announced that their services would be donated and that all proceeds of the event will go to the Vietnam Moratorium effort. The five-hour festival slated from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. will feature Harry Belafonte; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Dave Brubeck; Richie Havens; Mother Earth; Peter, Paul & Mary; The Rascals; The Cast of Hair; Judy Collins, and Jimi Hendrix & his Band Of Gypsys.

Suffering from exhaustion and the effects of a drink laced with an unknown substance taken before the show, Hendrix failed to execute his musical plans this evening. Having completed just two songs, “Who Knows” and “Earth Blues” the only thing Hendrix could do at that point was drop his guitar and sit down on the stage, meanwhile Miles and Cox continue to roll through the back beats. As Alfred Aronowitz later recalled in his New York Post column, “The crowd has already gotten twice its money’s worth when Jimi Hendrix stopped playing in the middle of his second number, said ‘That’s what happens when Earth ***** with Space, never forget that, that’s what happens.'” … “Jimi got up, put his guitar down and walked offstage.”

“When he came off stage,” explained Alan Douglas “he actually fell off the apron. At first I thought he was hurt, but he wasn’t. I then ran backstage to the dressing room to see if in fact he was okay. There he was sitting playing the guitar and smiling. I don’t know what went through his mind when he was on stage, but the first thing I noticed, it looked like he was having a big rhythm problem. I think he just got fed up.”

Backstage, Jimi meets Johnny Winter. In recounting the meeting Winter explains, “I saw Jimi backstage at the Madison Square Garden concert, the one where he just couldn’t play. When I saw him, it have me chills. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen. He came in with this entourage of people, and it was like he was already dead. He just walked in – and even though Jimi and I weren’t the greatest of friends, we always talked, always – and he came in with his head down, sat on the couch alone, and put his head in his hands. He didn’t say a word to anybody, and no one spoke to him. He didn’t move until it was time for the show. He really wanted to do that gig, but he never should have. It wasn’t that it was bad, but his whole thing was inspiration, and there wasn’t any. It was just completely uninspired; finally, right in the middle of a song, he just took his guitar off, sat on the stage – the band was still playing – and told the audience, “I’m sorry, we just can’t get it together.” One of his people said he was sick, and lead him off stage. He was just so unhappy that there was no way that he could play the show. It didn’t have anything to do with the group – he had already died!”